Is secular substitution of religion a threat to western civilisation?

In 1997 I delivered a presentation to the World Futures Society conference titled: The future of sex, politics and religion. In it, I used a few slides outlining secular substitutes for religion that constitute what I called ’21st century piety’. I’ve repeated my analysis many times since and still hold firmly by it, virtually unchanged since then. A lot of evidence since has backed it up, and lots of other people now agree.

My theory was that as people move away from traditional religion, the powerful inner drive remains to feel ‘holy’, that you are a good person, doing the right thing, on some moral high ground. It is a powerful force built into human nature, similar to the desire to feel social approval and status. When it is no longer satisfied by holding to religious rules, it may crystallise around other behaviours, that can mostly be summarised by ‘isms’. Vegetarianism and pacifism were the oldest ones to be conspicuous, often accompanied by New Ageism, followed soon by anti-capitalism, then environmentalism, now evolved into the even more religious warmism. Some behaviours don’t end in ism, but are just as obviously religion substitutes, such as subscribing strongly to political correctness or being an animal rights activist. Even hard-line atheism can be a religion substitute. It pushes exactly the same behavioural buttons.

I fully support protecting the environment, looking after animals, defending the poor, the powerless, the oppressed. I don’t mind vegetarians unless they start getting sanctimonious about it. I am not for a second suggesting there is anything bad about these. It is only when they become a religion substitute that they become problematic, but unfortunately that happens far too often. When something is internalised like a religious faith, it becomes almost immune to outside challenge, a faith unaffected by exposure to hard reality. But like religious faith, it remains a powerful driver of behaviour, and if the person involved is in power, potentially a powerful driver of policy. It can drive similar oppression of those with other world views, in much the same way as the Spanish Inquisition, but with a somewhat updated means of punishing the heretics. In short, the religion substitutes show many of the same problems we used to associate with the extremes of religion.

That’s the problem. The western world has managed pretty well over centuries to eventually separate religion from front line politics, so that politicians might pay lip service to some god or other to get elected, but would successfully put their religion aside once elected and the western state has been effectively secular for many years.  Even though they have gained acceptance in much of the wider population, because these religion substitutes are newer, they are not yet actively filtered from the official decision processes, and in many cases have even gained the power levels that religion once held at its peak. They feature much more heavily in government policies, but since they are faith based rather than reality based, the policies based on them are often illogical and can even be counter-productive, achieving the opposite of what they intend. Wishful thinking does not unfortunately rank highly among the natural forces understood by physicists, chemists or biologists. It doesn’t even rank highly as a social force.  Random policies seemingly pulled out of thin air don’t necessarily work just because they have been sprinkled with words such as equality, fairness and sustainability. Nature also requires that they meet other criteria – they have to follow basic laws of nature. They also have to be compatible with human social, economic, cultural and political forces. But having those sprinkles added is all that is needed to see them pass into legislation. 

And that is what makes religion substitutes a threat to western civilisation. Passing nonsensical legislation just because it sounds nice is a fast way to cripple the economy, damage the environment, wreck education or degrade social cohesion, as we have already frequently seen. I don’t need to pick a particular country, this is almost universally true  across the Western world. Policy making everywhere often seems to be little more than stringing together a few platitudes about ensuring fairness, equality, sustainability, with no actual depth or substance or systems analysis that would show reliable mechanisms by which they actually would happen, while ignoring unfashionable or unpleasant known forces or facts of nature that might prevent them from happening. Turning a blind eye to reality, while laying the wishful thinking on thickly and adding loads of nice sounding marketing words to make the policy politically accepted, using the unspoken but obvious threat of the Inquisition to ensure little resistance. That seems to be the norm now. 

If it were global then the whole world would decline, but it isn’t. Some areas are even worse crippled by the extremes of religion itself. Others seem more logical. Many areas face joint problems of corruption and poverty. With different problems and different approaches to solving them, we will all fare differently.

But we know from history that empires don’t last for ever. The decline of the West is well under way, with secular religion substitution at the helm.  When reality takes a back seat to faith, there can be no other outcome. And it is just faith, in different clothes, and it won’t work any better than religion did.

Coal power is making a comeback – an own goal by greens

I tweeted recently that Europe has the stupidest greens in the world.  I meant it. Today I have time to explain.

The Greens of course are political party in many countries now, but the term green applies generally to left wing environmentalists where things only ever seem to benefit the environment if they simultaneous result in wealth redistribution. It is that entire group that I am talking about here. There are lots of environmentalists who aren’t socialist and lots that aren’t idiots, with a very strong overlap in those groups. Many are very smart and support policies or develop solutions that actually benefit or protect the environment. But the greens do seem mostly to fall into the idiot camp. Sorry, but that is a fact of life.

Thanks to green pressure and proselytising of their CO2 catastrophist religion, the EU has gone nuts implementing ludicrously expensive policies to reduce carbon emissions, but has demonstrated mainly negative effects after hundreds of billions investment, often achieving exactly the opposite of what was intended. The greens’ almost universal refusal to engage in proper science or logical reasoning has resulted in very clear demonstration that nature doesn’t care about political ideology or intent, only what is actually done. Some examples are called for:

Many people have been driven needlessly into fuel poverty, their energy bills rising dramatically to pay for wind farms that often actually increase CO2 emissions over their life because they are built on peat-lands. Solar panels on UK rooftops produce more CO2 than they save too, again the opposite of the intent, while managing to successfully divert cash from the poor to the rich, also presumably the opposite of the socialist greens driving it. Industries have been forced to close or relocate overseas due to rising subsidies for renewables, severely damaging the economy and destroying working class jobs, where the intention was to revitalise with a green economy and create jobs, while again pushing up CO2 emissions when the relocation is to countries that produce more CO2 for the same energy. Recession and economic misery has been far deeper and longer with slower recovery thanks to the huge costs resulting directly from green policies, with the poor taking much of the burden. Millions in far away countries have also been pushed into starvation by rising food prices or have been forcefully relocated to make room for palm oil plantations to meet the demand caused by European regulations that biofuels must account for 5% of the fuel in our cars. The peat bogs drained and the rainforests chopped down to make space again increase CO2 emissions.

You couldn’t make it up. The evidence now seems incontrovertible to all but the looniest of greens that CO2 doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as was suggested, and we are certainly not threatened by environmental catastrophe due to global warming. But if we were, all the activities of the European greens so far would have made a huge contribution to making catastrophe worse and much earlier. Green is rapidly becoming synonymous with stupid. Greens are repeatedly shown to be the worst enemy of both the poor and of the environment, both of which they aim to help. Stupid almost isn’t a strong enough word.

Meanwhile, in the USA, where they refused to sign up to the worst of the policies, simple capitalist market forces forced the development of shale gas, reducing energy prices dramatically and stimulating the economy, making people richer and creating jobs, while replacing dirty, CO2-producing coal with clean CO2-light gas. Many business are relocating from the EU to the US, the only successful but entirely unintended CO2 reduction resulting from EU policy so far.  Meanwhile, greens even there have managed to get the government to throw billions away on futile projects to create a mythical green economy, with remarkably few actual jobs to show for the huge investment. It is the diametrically opposite force that has created them in any numbers.

However, because the USA has made so much progress reducing CO2 via shale gas, and is benefiting from greatly reduced energy prices, even it that wasn’t intentional, the price of coal there has been forced down so far that Europe is buying it in. Germany is now reinvesting in coal fired power stations that will greatly increase CO2 emissions, hilarious considering how much cash they have so far wasted on renewables to supposedly reduce them. Meanwhile, although large reserves of shale gas have been found all over Europe, the greens have managed to prevent and delay development of this abundant resource that would revitalise the economy while reducing CO2 emission and reducing pollution. Only now are some mainstream politicians starting to realise the stupidity of such policy and encouraging development of shale gas. In a decade or two the greens might finally understand too.

Japan too is now making a dash for coal. Having closed their nuclear stations, they have to make up the power deficit and with coal being so cheap, is their new fuel of choice. Again, the indirect result of environmental policies have caused a rise in demand for the worst CO2 emitter of them all. But at least the Japanese can also demonstrate that they are exploiting methane clathrates, which would have a CO2-reducing effect while reducing energy costs.

It seems to be Europe where the policies are greenest and stupidest, with the most harm and the highest costs for the least benefit and the consequential wealth redistribution from poor to rich. The only good thing is that since it tuned out that CO2 doesn’t matter as much as they claimed after all, at least they haven’t yet managed to bring about environmental catastrophe. If the greens had been right about CO2, given the policies they’ve so far forced through, we’d really be in a mess.

I rest my case. Europe has the stupidest greens in the world.

Isn’t graphene even more fun? Carbon chainmail

Thought for the day:

Graphene, picture from cnx.org

 

A Chainmail structure, picture from 123rf.com

It’s a bit easier to see how the links overlap in this pic:

 

pic from mediafocus.com

So, just thinking out loud, perhaps the rings in the chainmail above could be rings of carbon, just 6 atoms each. If so, would this be better than graphene at anything useful, or not? Would longer rings work better? The idea of carbon nanotube chainmail is about a decade old.

 

Powerpoint really is not designed as a proper drawing tool and not having a week to spare, I didn’t bother doing the link overlaps or even the bonds properly in my pic, but together with the other two, I think you will get the idea fine.

I don’t know if this will work or not, but it might be an idea worth looking at further.

 

 

 

Technology Convergence – What’s your Plan? Guest post by Rohit Talwar

Rohit is CEO of Fastfuture and a long-standing friend as well as an excellent futurist. He and I used to do a joint newsletter, and we have started again. Rohit sends it out to his mailing list as a proper newletter and because I don’t use mailing lists, I guest post it here. I’ll post my bit immediately after this one. I’m especially impressed since his bit ticks almost as many filing category boxes as it uses words.

Here is Rohit’s piece:

Technology Convergence – What’s your Plan?

I have just returned from South Korea where I was delivering a keynote speech to a cross-industry forum on how to prepare for and benefit from the opportunities arising from industry convergence. South Korea has made a major strategic commitment starting with government and running through the economy to be a leader in exploiting the potential opportunities arising from the convergence of industries made possible by advances in a range of disciplines. These include information and communications technology, biological and genetic sciences, energy and environmental sciences, cognitive science, materials science and nanotechnology.  From environmental monitoring, smart cars, and intelligent grids through to adaptive bioengineered materials and clothing-embedded wearable sensor device that monitor our health on a continuous basis – the potential is vast.

What struck me about the situation in Korea was how the opportunity is being viewed as a central component of the long-term future of Korea’s economy and how this is manifested in practice. Alongside a national plan, a government sponsored association has been established to drive and facilitate cross-industry collaboration to achieve convergence. In addition to various government-led support initiatives, a range of conferences are being created to help every major sector of the economy understand, explore, act on and realise the potential arising out of convergence.

I am fortunate to get the opportunity to visit 20-25 countries a year across all six continents and get to study and see a lot of what is happening to create tomorrow’s economy. Whilst my perspective is by no means complete, I am not aware of any country where such a systematic and rigorous approach is being taken to driving industry convergence. Those who study Korea know that this approach is nothing new for them – long term research and strategic planning are acknowledged to have played a major role in the evolution of its knowledge economy and rise of Korea and its technology brands on the global stage. Coming from the UK, where it seems that long term thinking and national policy are now long lost relatives, I wonder why it is that so few countries are willing to or capable of taking such a strategic approach.

Rohit on the Road

In the next few months Rohit will delivering speeches in Oslo, Paris, Vilnius, Warsaw, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Denver, Las Vegas, Oman, Leeds and London. Topics to be covered include human enhancement, the future of professional services, the future of HR, transformational forces in business, global drivers of change, how smart businesses create the future, the future technology timeline, the future of travel and tourism, the future of airlines and airports and the future of education. If you would like to arrange a meeting with Rohit in one of these cities or are interested in arranging a presentation or workshop for your organisation, please contact rohit@fastfuture.com

Isn’t graphene fun?

I’ve just been checking up on progress on supercapacitors to see if they are up to the job of replacing car batteries yet. It looks like they will be soon. Supercapacitors have lower energy density than lithium batteries, but can be charged extremely quickly.

My favoured technique is to build mats into the road surface every 50 metres (i.e. same as streetlights), and to charge the supercapacitor bank using induction as the car passes over them. That means that even a small energy capacity would be adequate. It wouldn’t have to power the car for 100 miles or more like a battery, but only for the first and last few kilometres of a journey where there are no mats. Otherwise, range wouldn’t be limited as it would charge all the time on the trip.

However, a few minutes ago I had another little spark of enlightenment. Why not also use the pads for propulsion too, using a linear induction motor?  (I like those)

If the pad gives an impulse to the car as well as a capacitor recharge, then the capacitor won’t need to be as big. And if the impulse is gentle enough, passengers won’t feel a jolt every time they drive over one.

Another little insight, hardly worthy of the name, is that with trains of self driving pods, the pods could be so close together on most journeys that they effectively have a continuous circuit from one end of the train to the other. That means that public transport pods that are only used locally and on certain routes might be able to get by with tiny capacitor banks.

Water companies to deliver Gbit broadband over wet string

Warning: to avoid wasting your time, and since it is no longer April 1st, be aware that this was published as an April Fool joke. Please enjoy it but don’t take it seriously:

Optical fibre is sometimes laid in conventional cable form just like copper wires, but because the actual fibres are so light, they can be coated with a rough surfacing that lets them be blown through plastic ducts using compressed air (the plastic ducts are under 1cm diameter). The fibre wiggles its way to the far end, carried by the air flow. It is simply called ‘blown fibre’ and is used extensively where ducts can easily be laid.

The water industry obviously has huge experience in making smooth channels for water to flow through to every building in the land. Blown fibre technology can adapt to this. Several years ago, advised by future technology consultants Futurizon, research produced a soft furry coating that makes it easy to flush coated fibres down water pipes. The coating is based on sugar and has the consistency of candyfloss. The clever breakthrough was making it so that it lasts until installation is complete and then dissolves harmlessly away in less than an hour.  It is of course safe to drink the tap water even soon after installation.  The remaining problem was how to route the fibres when they come to a junction. The inspiration came from optically guided missiles, which have steerable nose cones, that allow the missile to be routed in the required direction just by rotating the cone. Adding a tiny reusable nose cone capsule to the head to the fibre, and knowing the architecture of the pipework, the fibre can be routed correctly at each junction.

A global consortium of water companies now plans to install nationwide fibre networks via the water supply via a company called Fallopior. The main offices and roll-outs will be in the UK, New Zealand, Australia, and the USA, all of which face issues of getting access to ultrafast broadband for rural areas and all of which have the carbon subsidy economics to make it work. The name of Fallopior presumably emerged because the system uses tubes for delivery and perhaps to try to tap into the female broadband market. At the home, a broadband ‘tap’ is installed that allows the fibre to emerge. Once the fibre is delivered and connected, it is pushed through a silicone plug that is pushed into the tap to completely seal it.

The fibre is routed all the way to the home by this means, and then the broadband tap is opened. A few litres of water later, and the fibre is delivered. It is far more environmentally friendly way of installing the fibre than digging up pavements and roads. The carbon savings and the selling of the associated credits are calculated to reduce the cost of installation to almost zero. This even works in remote areas since the carbon savings are of course far higher here too. The costs of the fibre are low enough to be absorbed into even a low rental agreement. Fallopior say that they can will offer 1Gb/s to any home even in the remotest parts of the country for as little as £5 per month, and this is easily enough to deliver all the high definition TV and internet a home.

Broadband providers have struggled with the economics of fibre to the home and many homes still have to suffer slow broadband, even though they pay far more than this, especially in the country. But all homes have a water supply, so this technology is perfectly adapted. Since the roll-out plans of the other UK providers are so sluggish, the water companies expect to seize massive market share almost overnight.

Some homes questioned about the potential service insisted they don’t want ultra-high speed broadband with the temptations it brings, and amazingly would prefer to have a slower service, even if it means they have to pay more to get less. Engineers have solved this one too. The coating allows very smooth thin nylon string to be coated temporarily and flushed down the pipes in the same way instead of fibre. Since the water keeps it lubricated, wear would be very low and it will only need replaced every 5 years. But that re-installation increases the cost to £7.50 per month.

Now to every nerd’s dream – just like two cans with string between them, this wet string will transmit high audio signals, 100KHz. With the phenomenal ability of today’s coding and compression schemes, this allows 3Mbit/s to be delivered, comparable with what many people receive today on their low speed broadband. Those questioned said they would be happier with this limit which lets them do basic internet access but not much else. It still competes extremely well on price with offerings from other providers so again Fallopior expect massive demand. In an emergency, when there is no electricity supply, a home-owner can still signal the emergency services by making a short series of tugs on the string. Simple Morse code SOS can easily be sent this way. 

A string plant in Cornwall has secretly been built in preparation and has stockpiled  over 100 million km of string. Others have been established on similar basis in the other consortium countries. As another carbon-subsidised activity, the UK site is attached to a 3MW wind turbine. This one looks a little unusual since the spinning motion of the blades is used directly via gears rather like a traditional windmill) to spin the string and power the machinery. String output therefore varies according to wind strength, hence the need to stockpile supplies. Nevertheless, the result is string that is entirely paid for via carbon subsidies. Location in remote Cornwall was chosen because of high winds and proximity to seaside resorts with easy access to local expertise from candyfloss experts. The late arrival of spring and hence the candyfloss market has meant that many were available and willing to assist on the project.

In spite of all the many benefits and promises of very low cost ultra-fast broadband, there is just one problem – as hinted by the unusual just-after-midnight timing of the press release by the Fallopior’s HQ in Auckland, New Zealand, and of course the company’s name.

Out of town centres are the most viable future for physical shops

So the government’s ‘retail guru’ Mary Portas has said that some high streets are doomed and should be turned over to other uses. I don’t share the government’s high regard for her but I do agree that it is time to reconsider the structure and location of retailing.

As usual, I’ll highlight the problem first, then suggest the solution.

I live on the edge of Ipswich. The area is a nice place to live but I rarely go into town. To be absolutely honest, I try hard NOT to go into town. I am sure they don’t want me there anyway, since they try hard to deter me from going in.

In the last year, I’ve been to radio studio three times, the cinema once (that involved over 20 mins looking for a car parking space nearby, eventually parking much further away and walking), and shopping once, dragged kicking and screaming, having to wade through a lake in a waiting-for-brown-field-development car park on our side of town that we used to avoid the trauma of traffic congestion. The planners were presented with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix a lot of the congestion when they started redevelopment of the docks, but instead actually worsened the traffic routing and created even more congestion.  I don’t know why they did that, but they did. You could say that Ipswich had been a one-horse town, but the planners shot the horse. Ipswich could have been a great deal better with just a bit of thought. Having said that, there are far worse places, far worse. I’m probably just a troglodyte that owns a shaver.

Like many other towns, a lot of the shops are closing. The issues are familiar all over the country. Congestion, lack of parking and high parking fees compete with easy home delivery from online purchases. Congestion is not the same as throughput, and even though it seems busy, town centre businesses obviously aren’t getting enough business or they wouldn’t be closing. 

I’ve written on the future of high street retailing before:

http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/the-future-of-high-street-survival-the-6s-guide/

http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/future-high-street-retailing/

Online shopping offers formidable competition, and in those previous blogs I looked at what can be done to compete . This time, I want to concentrate on the location of shops.

Sometimes I just want to get out of the house and go shopping. If I don’t have anything particularly in mind, I go to Woodbridge and Felixstowe, mainly because they are just as fast to get to as Ipswich, but prettier, it is far easier to park there, and parking doesn’t cost a fortune. If the trip is purely functional, I will often end up at a retail park. They are easy to get to, I can park close to the shop I want, and it is free.

There has been huge resistance to out of town shopping centres over the last decade or two because they obviously take customers away from town centres, and involve driving so were considered environmentally unfriendly. Let’s look at both of those in the light of the new reality.

Big retail parks are mostly full of enormous warehouse stores that offer a purely functional destination. Some are selling stuff that is best suited to online purchasing and the less competitive ones are likely to die or shrink. As they free up the big warehouses, these could be attractively redesigned to house many shops that once lived in town centres. So when someone goes to their local retail park to look at furniture or DIY kit, they might well spend an extra while wandering through some interesting small shops.  The big stores would act as a functional magnet, and the small shops would add interest and serendipity, making a boring functional trip into an enjoyable experience that could fund a flourishing retail community. Provided the rents and rates are OK, and that parking is free and abundant, this could work well as a model for high street condensation and relocation. It could even rejuvenate physical retailing, especially small businesses.

As for environmental impact, being stuck in a traffic jam is far more polluting than driving along unimpeded. Out of town centres can be placed to work well with the local human geography and roads so that traffic can flow smoothly and make less pollution. Parking must be adequate to cope with latent demand or that will drive potential customers onto the net, or force them to drive round and round car parks looking for places, polluting as they go. People who live in town centres generally have ready access to public transport and it is just as easy to aim routes at out of town centres as it is to town centres. If the old high streets are re-purposed, then retail business would just be moved to more viable locations where they could flourish.

If we move shopping out of town, almost everyone benefits. People living out of town would not have to go into town to shop, and congestion there would probably fall so that it would be less traumatic when they do have to go in for other reasons. People living in towns would still have public transport access to shops, just in different locations. The few who live within easy walking distance of town shopping centres would suffer having to go further to shops, but they will suffer their loss anyway if they don’t move.

For people out of town, well designed out-of-town shopping centres offer the potential of reinvention and to rekindle the joy of shopping. For townies, the alternative to shops that are a bit further away might be to have no shops at all. That’s probably the new reality and we either embrace it or suffer it. Government and planners should recognise that and make policy accordingly.

 

Hover boards

My daughter asked me when we could expect hoverboards. OK.

In the old film Back to the Future, the hero rides a hoverboard instead of a skateboard. We don’t see many of them around yet, but there are a few ways you could do it. One is clumsy and involves using a compressor and air jets to make a small hovercraft that you can ride on.

Another has no moving parts, so would be much more in keeping with the one Michael J Fox modelled.

I wrote a while ago about the future of bicycles:

http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/future-of-bicycles/

The basic idea was to add a plate to the front forks of the bike that would be pulled along a linear induction mat.

A highly skilled skateboard user with an excellent sense of balance might be able to dispense with the bike bit. Instead, repulsion between the magnetic forces created by the mat and circuits in the board would keep it afloat. Pulling the board along would be no problem of course, as the filed can propagate down the mat just as for the bikes.

The big question is whether sufficient force could be generated with everyday simple circuits, or even with permanent neodymium magnets. And how easy it would be to balance the board. I suspect it ought to be doable but my EM theory is rather rusty and although I have designed magnetic clutches before, and the principle should be similar, I am no longer up to the job.

It isn’t essential to have a linear induction mat cannibalised from bicycle lane use. If there is sufficient demand for hover-skate-board parks, special surfaces with loads of coils could be switched on and off to coordinate with the board circuits to make it far easier. Rather like a Segway manages to stay upright by rapidly adjusting torques, a hoverboard could easily house enough electronics to do the job. It would cost more than an ordinary skateboard of course, but with no wheels, maybe a wider range of tricks might be feasible too. With no wheels, they could slide sideways and spin around easily. That would make them harder in some ways, but also more versatile, so sports could evolve that are even more fun that regular skateboards. As someone who has never managed to stay on a real skateboard more than 25m yet, I feel inadequate to advise on techniques, but the engineering should be feasible.

In terms of timescale, there is nothing here that is beyond current technology. Nobody has bothered yet, as far as I know. But if there was a demand, someone could make hoverboards soon, and they could fly, and you could probably make some pretty fun sports with them too.

Future population v resources. Humans are not a plague.

Sir David Attenborough is once again in the news, arguing that humans are a plague on the earth. He has been an excellent presenter over the years, but he does himself no favours by making such claims. Doomsayers are invariably wrong. I’ve written a few times about this, but here’s a quick refresher to save you looking them up.

Let’s get rid of a silly straw man before we start – exponential growth continuing forever. Nobody sane think the Earth’s human population will carry on increasing exponentially forever. Obviously it will level off. Exponential growth all the way to infinity isn’t sustainable, but since the population will level off around 10 billion, we really don’t need to spend too much time worrying about the mathematics of infinite consumption. I would personally put the maximum capacity of the Earth at around 100 billion, but I don’t expect us ever to have more than 10 billion here, and nobody sensible does. Other planets will house some more, but they will have their own economics.

First, we aren’t running out of physical resources, just moving them around. Apart from a few spacecraft that have moves some stuff off planet, some excess radioactive decay induced in power stations and weapons, and helium and hydrogen escaping from the atmosphere, all of which is offset by meteorites and dust landing from space, all we have done is convert stuff to other forms. Almost all materials are more plentiful now than they were 40 years ago when Sir David’s predecessors warned of the world running out imminently. They were wrong, so is he. If we do start to run short, we can mine key elements from rubbish tips and use energy to convert back to any form we need. We can engineer substitutes  And we can gather them from space. Another way of looking at this issue is that we live on top of 6000km of resources and only have homes a few metres deep. When we fill them, which doesn’t take much, we dispose of one thing to make room for a new one. Recycling technology is getting better all the time, at the same time as material technology means we need less stuff to make something, and can do so with a wider range of input elements.

We are slowly depleting some organic resources. For example, fossil fuels, but there are several hundred years supply left, and we will not need any more than a tiny fraction of that before we move to other energy sources. Also, fish, many stocks are threatened around the world, so fishing needs some work in designing and implementing better practices, but that is not unachievable by any means. Forestry is being depleted in some areas and expanding in others. Some of the areas that are being wiped out are because environmentalists and other doomsayers have forced daft policies through that perversely encourage people to burn forests down to make the land available for biofuel plantations and carbon offset schemes.

We certainly are not short of space. If the inhabitable land in the world were inhabited at the same density as southern England, we could house 70-80 billion people. The UK sometimes feels full when we get stuck in traffic jams or queues for public services, but these are mainly a matter of design. Self driving vehicles can increase road capacity by a factor of 5, regional rail capacity by a factor of 200. Replacement of most public sector workers by machines, or better still, good system design, would eradicate most queues and improve most services.

Energy isn’t a problem in the long term in spite of what doomsayers claim. Shale gas is already reducing costs in the USA at the same time as reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In Europe, where doomsayers and environmentalist have more power to influence policy, CO2 emissions are increasing while energy costs threaten many areas of the economy. Obama’s recent speech threatens to undermine the USA’s advantage but that’s another story. Nuclear energy currently depends on uranium  but thorium based power is under development and is very likely to succeed in due course, adding several hundred years of supply. Solar, fusion, geothermal and shale gas will add to this to provide abundant power for even a much great population, within a few decades, well ahead of the population curve. The only energy shortages we will see will be doomsayer-induced.

Future generations will face debts handed on to them without their consent, but will also inherit a physical and cultural infrastructure with built in positive feedback that ensure rapid technological development. Among its many benefits, future technology will greatly reduce the amount of material needed to accomplish a task. It will also expand the global economy to provide enough wealth to buy a decent standards of living for everyone. It will also clean up the environment  It will also produce far more food from less land area, allowing land to be returned to nature. Food production per hectare has doubled in the last 30 years. The technology promises further gains  into the foreseeable future.

The world Attenborough is scared of will actually be a greener and more pleasant land, with nature in a better state than today, with a larger world population that is richer and better fed, almost certainly no more than 10 billion. Providing that is, that we can stop doomsayers forcing their policies through – the only thing that would really wreck the environment. A doomsayer-free human population is not a plague but a benefit to the Earth and nature. The doomsayers themselves and their daft policies are the greatest proven threat. If Sir David really cares about nature, he should focus on letting us be inspired by nature as he does so brilliantly, and let technologists get on with making sure it can flourish in the future

 

 

Future food production

Food production is adapting to increased environmental awareness, but we will see far more change over coming years.

There is a lot of innovation right now in food production. Hydroponics is growing, as are vertical farms, home growing and focus on local production that is encouraging cottage industry specialists. There are some nice synergies. Greenhouses can make good use of waste heat from power stations and also benefit from the CO2 given off if they burn fossil fuels, which of course is locked up when the plants convert it to biomass. This effectively increases the energy efficiency of the power station by adding an extra layer of chemical energy recovery after thermal. There are many articles already out there about hydroponics etc so I don’t need to repeat them here. That’s what Google is for.

The web makes it easy for producers of all kinds to have a closer relationship with customers, so it is now possible to organise local marketing and distribution around social networking, with groups of customers even commissioning crops grown according to specific regimes. GPS-enabled tractors can treat each square metre of a field effectively as a different managed allotment. With people more interested in exactly how their food is produced, this is sure to find a healthy market as the economy recovers.

At higher levels, financial strain during the lengthy recession is forcing many people to commercialise their hobbies, such as baking or catering, creating a growing home-made sector. This will even extend into arts ad crafts thanks to new technology such as 3D printing, which will make its way into the kitchen any time soon.  So the emerging pattern is one of rapidly increasing diversity in food production, from crop growing to processed foods manufacture. This creates opportunities for increased competition in the food space, but also presents risks to existing manufacturers. As ever with any kind of turbulence, the winners and losers will be decided by how willing and able companies are to adapt.

Vertical farms on the walls of tall buildings add agricultural space to cities and as well as growing food, also helps air quality. The food would be of dubious taste and value if air were polluted as badly as it used to be, but with emissions now, it is probably OK. A variety of mechanisms have been suggests for vertical farms. Some look more feasible than others, but the general idea seems workable, and experimentation and development will sort out which solutions work best. One thing that is easy to forget though is that the amount of sunlight incident on a given land area doesn’t depend on the building architecture raised on it, and using a wall gives a lower energy density than a field or a roof because the same total light is spread over a larger area. Interior farms of course need artificial light, but if that is produced via nuclear energy, then it might still work out well environmentally.

Home finishing is a good prospect too. Many people are already used to part bake products, where they buy a product that is already mostly prepared and just needs finishing off in the oven to make one with all the benefits of freshly made cuisine. Microwave and other ready-meals are even more familiar. 3D printing technology may even have a future role, making edible frills and accessories to brighten up appearance.

Home finishing could be done as a small local business too. Large manufacturers could gain local presence for fresh produce by using local finishers, and these could be ordinary households or based in small offices or shops, making a new cottage industry. They could also work well with local manufacturing and distribution companies. Social networks could provide most of the platform for these local business clouds but they could also be based on systems run by large companies.

This social potential is useful if people rebel against the multinationals at some point. With frequent problem areas like tax avoidance, misleading information, exploitation and other issues that are setting people against them, having a fall-back position increases leverage by showing that communities are not powerless.

Current biotechnology research into lab-grown meat might eventually flourish into a large meat manufacturing industry. It is hard to tell yet how successful it might be in creating cost effective, healthy and palatable solutions. Vegetarian meats would presumably see a good market since many vegetarians avoid meat mainly because of the ways animals are reared and treated, and many meat eaters also have some reservations and would be willing to switch. Lab-grown meat would be little different from a yoghurt in terms of its cruelty implications. Although the principle has been proven, much work is need to replicate textures and taste well at a reasonable cost.

Lab-grown meat could be more energy efficient than that produced by animals, and would liberate farmland for crops. Together with increasing productivity in crop production anyway, some expect that we will be able to start returning land to nature in the second half of this century because we will make plenty of food for everyone with less land.

Biotech will create new varieties of crops, some with extra vitamin content or other health benefits, lower fat animals and enable varieties that are adapted to a wider range of climates, thereby increasing the amount of land that could be used for agriculture.

Home printer technology also is being hyped for food production, or rather assembly is probably a more accurate description, since nobody is yet suggesting its use for making the raw materials such as proteins and carbohydrates.  Its is effectively the next level up in abstraction from the lab grown products. Even chocolate could be made using printers. Food printers could only ever be a niche market, but could sit alongside other home gadgets such as microwaves and mixers. Cakes, confectionery,  frills and accessories would be the probable markets. It would especially appeal to the kinds of people who make elaborate cake decorations and could extend creative food design to a much broader group.

Food technology will continue to other areas too, making more appealing products from even wider range of raw materials. GM bacteria or algae could compete well with land grown crops. Algae may be grown at sea as part of carbon reduction schemes anyway, and could be used for either biofuel or as a component for food production. Of course, many foods contain lots of ingredients, so even if it isn’t suitable as a main platform, such humble starting points may be a used as fillers or other additives.

Of course, fish farming is bound to increase too. Many fish species are threatened today and near extinction of a key species does eventually force governments to listen and act. Although regulation so far has at best been poor, it can only improve and perhaps we may soon have a global set of treaties that ensure sustainable fishing and farming. There will also be a place for GM fish that maybe grow faster or breed faster. Some countries will be more willing to accept GM than others but when the choice is high prices v GM, GM will win out.